By Kathia Salazar | Development Manager
And, we've made it to 2021. Now more than ever, we are grateful for the community that has funded, supported, celebrated, and advocated for our organization throughout the years.
At a time where everything feels uncertain, we find comfort and encouragement in knowing that our mission to support young people to create positive change in their communities remains intact and our impact keeps growing -- thanks to people like you who care about our cause.
Here's an update of all of our programs so far.
GCMx
Within a year of launching GCMx, where local partners can organize and run impactful events in their communities, it has turned out to be one of our most vibrant and impactful programs. Last year, there were 12 independent, virtually-organized GCMx events that trained over 400 participants from 20 countries, including Malawi, the Philippines, Palestine, Romania, UAE, Kenya, and India, to name a few. For the first half of 2021, there are already 7 events being organized, reaching new countries and young people.
Grants Programme
In 2020, we awarded grants to 32 youth-led projects, including 20 projects in 12 different countries, coming directly from students who participated in our Project Management for Changemakers course. Whether teaching underprivileged girls how to build robots in El Salvador and Nigeria, facilitating access to drinking water in impoverished neighborhoods in Venezuela, helping children learn English through interactive Ebooks in Romania or bringing solar electricity to remote villages in Malawi, the projects launched thus far from our Changemakers School are making a difference in their communities. Our grant recipients had to adapt their projects to comply with certain health and safety measures, and projects whose activities would be impossible during a pandemic have been given the opportunity to postpone or apply again when it is safe to do so.
Changemakers School
Project Management for Changemakers: Since launching a course on Project Management for Changemakers, we have enrolled 1,294 students from over 55 countries and made the grants application process available to anyone who completed the course. Thanks to the generous support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), we were able to offer full scholarships to the course to +1000 students from Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi and give 20 grants to support projects launched throughout the course.
Facilitation Tools for Changemakers: With the massive shift to online engagement, virtual events and remote work have become essential. The curriculum developed on effective online engagement, teamwork and events have been of great value. These lessons cover online ice-breakers, platforms, best practices, and tips and tools to support changemakers and teams in executing their work to create a positive change.
Spanish and Portuguese versions of the courses will be released in the coming months.
Young Changemakers Podcast
In a period where many of us look to engage with meaningful stories to get inspired, our Young Changemakers Podcast has been positively accepted and reached a greater audience. Our changemakers from Australia to Colombia to South Africa to South Sudan have been able to bring personal and life-changing stories to more than 6000 listeners in more than 100 countries on issues as varied as Girls Education, Poverty Eradication, Peace Building, Water Access, Tech for Equality, and more.
We are extremely happy to welcome Sara Botero as our new host for Season 3, to be launched this year in April. Expect to hear more episodes in Spanish too!
Webinars and Tool Kits
Toolkits: From project management, fundraising, digital media, to design thinking, our toolkits are powerful resources that can be downloaded for free from our website and that have benefited not only young people but organizations all over the world. 2020 saw a 366% increase in downloads (+3k) and these are now available in 11 languages in total.
Webinars: There has been strong popularity and an increase in our webinar views. With changemakers and experts speaking on topics as varied as fundraising, how to approach sponsors, social media advocacy and more, our webinars make our advocacy possible as they reach people from all over the world and introduce them to topics every changemaker should be aware of, accessible at any time. This year, we launched the first webinar in Portuguese: “Youth, Activism and Democracy,” and we have a line up of webinars coming up in the next few months.
Virtual Youth Summits
As we transitioned to hosting our Youth Summits in a virtual setting in 2020, we experienced huge success in the Virtual Events held in both April and November last year. With more than 1,800 participants combined, we were able to make a call to action and inspire young people to engage in inspiring discussions and networking spaces with others across the world. With a combination of learning and practice, we were able to bring guest speakers from all continents to train participants in skills such as problem framing, theory of change, story telling, fundraising, branding and marketing, among others.
Mentorship
As we head towards celebrating almost 2 years since we first launched the Mentorship Programme, we are honoured to currently have an ongoing cycle with 27 mentees and 23 mentors from more than 27 countries combined, including new participants from Morocco, Italy, Dominican Republic, and Chile, to name a few.
From providing hygiene education and product access in order to improve the health and self-esteem of youth to training young communities on empathetic communication and self-exploration creating a global ecosystem for social changemakers, writing policy papers and lobbying to improving the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ students living with mental Illness, our mentorship program equips exceptionally talented young people on their path to changemaking.
Through our programme, their mission and journey is strengthened and their impact is maximized.
Looking Ahead:
As we continue to work tirelessly for an exciting and purposeful 2021, on behalf of the Global Changemakers team, we want to THANK YOU for being part of our community. We firmly believe that the power of our organization comes not only from what we call ourselves but from the passionate people like you that live and breathe our shared mission every single day.
Thanks for the support!
For more information, take a closer look at our 2020 Annual Report
Links:
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